epicmickeyfandomcom-20200223-history
User blog:Scrooge MacDuck/Translating the Epic Mickey 2 Graphic Novel
Hello, fellows. Let's put it in a nutshell: I translated the ''Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two'' Graphic Novel in English based on Italian scans and the few sketches with English dialogue by Peter David I had found. Most of the dialogue comes from either of three sources: David's English text when I had it, the game, or a translation of the Italian when there was no counterpart ot the comic line in the game that I could paste. I'm afraid the law would have something to say against me posting every single page here, but gere is the "making-of" of the translation, which will give you the occasion to see many pages in their translated version while also giving you some informations about the Peter David script and the Italian localization I worked backwards from. Page 3 What prompted me to do that ? Well, there had been a beginning of scanlation on tumblr a few years ago, and well,… but look for yourself. The editing of the dialogues into the panels is correct, but obviously, this ''translation was done only based on the Italian version. I guess the resulting dialogue is okay for an outsider, but as someone who knwos the original game, I found it deeply unnerving. It ''echoes bits of the game, but using synonyms for no reason and it unnerves me. I mean, gosh, Mickey does not say "Let's shed some light on the matter", he says "What about we try to get to the bottom of this". Ortensia doesn't say, "Out of here ! The caslte is collapsing" but "Hurry before the whole castle falls down !". Oswald doesn't say "The shock knocked knocked the projector, we'll have to use the train", he says "The quakes really did a number on the prokectos so we'll have to sue the train". See ? Everything is twisted ''in a disagreable way. The second reason is, for whatever reason, the scanlation was never completed, ending at page 14 or so. I then took matters in my own hands. Say, wanna see what I did with the same badly-translated page ? My editing font may not be as good as the other one, I'll admit it, but I think that this more fitting a translation. Page 4 Next page was the ''Mad Doctor is not mad song sequence. I thought it would be an easy one, just editing preexisting text (because this page was one of the ones we got Peter David's script for), but actually it wasn't, for two reasons. Reason 1: David's script doesnt fit the panels. Here is the script: And here is the finished page I had: In the third panel, the bubbles aren't where they ought to be: one that was supposed to be pointing at Ortensia was instead pointing at the Mad Doctor, and Ortensia's line had vanished, leaving Oswald's anwer explained (what "wasn't so bad" ?). So I had to edit the bubble's tail back ontowards Ortensia and a few things like that. Then there is another fact; the Mad Doctor's song has been totally rewritten by Peter David (I read it was because the finished lyrics weren't validated yet when David was assigned to do the script, and all he had was a quick script of what the song was supposed to convey in terms of meaning). Now, it's not like Peter David's lyrics are bad or anything, but I think it was a loss that the original songs couldn't be used. However now I had the opportunity to re-edit the real song in the panels ! Problem is, Ortensia and Oswald's dialogue ("That doesn't even rhyme !" "Oh, it wasn't so bad for something off the top of his head…") don't fit witht the real song, since, well, there is no contrived rhyme in it while there was in David's version. Argggh. My way around it was to use a smaller font in those speech bubbles to be able to add David's additional, intentionnally-misrhyming to the complete lyrics of the real Mad Doctor isn't Mad song. I had however no way to slip the "Doc are you okay ?" funny moment, since the art can only be repurposed to an extent. The result was this: (ah, I also have no idea why the first scanlation had completely changed the bottom panel's dialogues; I also added those eyelids to Oswald in said panels to make his expression correspond with the game's, because he had no business frowning while saying this line) Category:Blog posts